2002 Mahatma Gandhi Lecture on Nonviolence,

Centre for
Peace Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

Human rights and reconciliation in
Australia in the
twenty-first century: an unfinished journey

Lowitja O'DonoghueFlinders University, South Australia

Born at Indulkana, located in central south
Australia, O'Donoghue is a member of the Yankunjatjara people of North West
South Australia. Her commendations include the Order of Australia (1977);
commander of the British Empire (1983); Australian of the Year (1984) and
Australias Living National Treasures (1998). She was also the former
chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC)
from the inception of the Commission.

After her retirement, O'Donoghue continued her commitment in the areas of
Aboriginal health, welfare and human rights and is currently a visiting
fellow at Flinders University. She is also chairperson of the Co-operative
Research Centre for Aboriginal and Tropical Health; chairperson of the
Sydney Olympic Games National Indigenous Advisory Committee; member of the
Sydney Olympic Games Volunteers Committee; trustee of the Rio Tinto
Aboriginal Foundation; and a member of the Indigenous Law Centre at the
University of New South Wales.

O'Donoghue has received honorary doctorate awards from the Merdoch
University in Western Australia; Flinders University of South Australia;
University of South Australia; the Australian National University in
Canberra and the Queensland University of Technology. She is an honorary
fellow of the Royal College of Nursing Australia as well as the Royal
College of Physicians. She is also the patron of the Military Nurses
Memorial fund, the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre and the Congress for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses.

Presented at McMaster University, Canada, October 23, 2002

Thank you. I am delighted to have crossed the world to be
here in your beautiful country. And I am very honoured indeed to have been
invited to give the seventh annual Mahatma Gandhi Lecture on Nonviolence. I
believe I am the first Australian to do so. So it is indeed a great privilege.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate
McMaster University and its Centre for Peace Studies for the work that you do -
and to offer my whole-hearted support.

I must confess though, that for the first time in my life,
I had a few days of anxiety a month or so ago, when I felt that I really didn't
want to fly. I think that this was prompted by those graphic television images
of the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre, which flooded the media on
the anniversary of September 11th. I don't know what it was like here, but in
Australia it was re-played endlessly, so that it became like a kind of feverish
nightmare! It's interesting to recognize that even ordinary citizens like me
worry about being caught up in the violence of world politics. The recent
tragic events in Bali in which so many civilians died, including many young
Australians, have compounded these fears.

However, I suspect that people have always looked to the
past and thought of earlier times as less complex and less dangerous. Perhaps
in reality, every generation has had to contend with the same fundamental issues
around conflict. Issues such as: justice, courage, revenge, fear, ethics, and
morality. But, having said that, it seems to me at this particular historical
moment (as America is about to attack Iraq - with or without the sanction of the
United Nations), that the world is very dangerously poised indeed. And so, the
issues of non-violence, and how to deal effectively with conflict and
oppression, are as urgent as ever, or perhaps more urgent than ever.

I don't pretend to be a Gandhi scholar. I haven't read all
the books ... but at the risk of sounding flippant.... I have seen the movie!
I know that Gandhi was a visionary, a great philosopher, and a deeply spiritual
man. Like most people I applaud his commitment to non-violence and his
unwavering concern for justice and equality. He once said in fact "agitation
against every form of injustice is the breath of political life." That's a view
of politics I heartily endorse.

I also applaud that he was a strong advocate for the rights
of women to participate fully in political life and social work. And I know
that he devoted much of his life to opposing racial discrimination in both South
Africa and India.

I know too that one of his great achievements was freeing
India from the shackles of British rule. This of course strikes a particular
chord with me, as an Indigenous Australian. In fact, I spent a year nursing in
Assam, India in my 30s, where I worked among people who lived in poverty, and
where I had the opportunity to see first hand the negative effects of an imposed
colonial culture. Like many Australians I still haven't quite recovered from
the result of our referendum almost three years ago, in which we chose to retain
a British monarch as our head of state! I vigorously supported the campaign for
Australia to become a republic, as you might imagine, and it has never ceased to
amaze me that all Australians in their right mind did not agree with me!

What I admire most about Gandhi I think was that he was not
just a great philosopher - he was also an activist. Gandhi was a highly
strategic thinker who managed to mobilise popular opinion to achieve his goals.
One of the lessons his life has for us is the emphasis on community, his belief
in the power of collectivism. Before pursuing political reform he made sure
that his ideas and methods were widely accepted by the people.

Increasingly I believe, in a world so divided by politics,
religion, nationalism and the pursuit of wealth - that our only hope lies in
developing an alternative sense of community connectedness, both locally and
globally. We live in times where economic bottom lines hijack the agenda and
put social justice issues very much in the background. Economic capital is
valued over social capital. And this breeds alienation, pessimism, and faint
heartedness about the possibilities of social reform.

Gandhi never divorced politics from social, religious or
ethical matters. He once wrote, [and I quote] that:

"human life, being an undivided
whole, no line could be drawn between its different compartments, nor between
ethics and politics".

Interestingly, this mirrors the traditional beliefs of the
Australian Aborigines, my people.

Gandhi also believed that we need to have a sense of a
global community. He said [and I quote]:

"The whole world is like the human
body with its various members. Pain in one member is felt in the whole body".

I'm sure that sentiments such as this have been very
important in the formation of the Centre of Peace Studies here at McMaster
University. And I'm sure too that they have inspired and sustained this
lectureship over the past six years.

Australia is often described as a young country and a lucky
country. Both those perceptions, of course, assume that you are white. From an
Indigenous perspective Australia is neither young nor lucky. Indigenous
Australia is in fact the oldest living culture in the world.

But perhaps a few facts about contemporary Australia might
be appropriate here. Like Canada, Australia is large in area but low in
population density. There are approximately 19.7 million Australians. But for
every square kilometre of land there are only around two people. This statistic
hides the fact that 84% of the population is contained within the most densely
populated 1 % of the continent, around the southeast and southwest coasts. 41 %
of Australia's population were either born overseas or have one or both parents
born overseas. Especially in the capital cities of Sydney and Melbourne, we are
a very cosmopolitan society. This multicultural mix has brought with it a
richness and diversity, evident in our cuisine, religion, sport, the arts, and
culture generally. However, despite our reputation for being an egalitarian
society Australia is a deeply divided society in which there are huge
differences between the haves and have-nots. And of course Indigenous
Australians feature prominently among the have-nots.

In June 2001, the total Indigenous population was estimated
to be 427,000 - approximately 2% of Australia's total population. For over
50,000 years before the British ships came to Sydney Cove, Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people had lived a largely nomadic hunter-gatherer existence in
harmony with the land. Our traditional law and spirituality centred on the
land. Like children, the land was something to be nurtured and loved.

Captain James Cook's instructions were to take possession
of the continent if it was uninhabited. If inhabited it was to be done [I
quote] "with the consent of the natives". This consent was, of course, neither
sought nor gained, and the legal fiction of terra nullius - or
unoccupied, empty land - was conceived. This meant that there was considered to
be no need for a treaty or compensation.

Until recently the official and popular view in the history
books, was that Australia was peaceably colonised. But from an Indigenous point
of view, white settlement of Australia was an invasion - one that was
perpetrated with arrogance and paternalism at best, and at worst with brutality
and violence. For more than 160 years a 'bloody frontier was moved across
Australia, resulting in the deaths of approximately 20,000 Aborigines and 2000
Europeans[1].
With advances in gun technology in the latter half of the nineteenth century,
the Aboriginal spears and guerrilla tactics were no match for the revolvers and
rifles of the settlers, the military and the police. There was simply no
contest.

In later years when
physical violence was no longer officially sanctioned, Aboriginal people were
managed and contained by assimilation policies, often literally confined to
reserves. Our numbers were also decimated by introduced disease, alcohol and
high fat and sugar diets. We became victims of a different kind of war - a war
of attrition -which continues apace today, and is evident in the appalling
health profiles of my people.

The forcible removal of
our children was the most insidious form of violence inflicted upon us. In the
sixty years between 1910 and 1970 an estimated 40,000 children were forcibly
removed from their families and communities. And this was official Government
policy. In the guise of "protection" Indigenous children, especially so-called
"half-caste" children, were taken under duress and against their parents'
wishes. They were, in effect, stolen. There was scarcely an Indigenous family,
which was not affected. Many lived in constant grief and fear that other
children would be taken. The entire fabric of communities was destroyed. They
were taken away, often right across the country, and put into institutions or
foster homes. When they were old enough the girls were often placed into
domestic service, the boys into labouring jobs.

The effects of such
dislocation and deprivation have been profoundly disabling, threatening the very
core of our people's well being. And the effects are ongoing, setting up a
vicious cycle of damage from which these children, and their children, have had
difficulty escaping. I was one of these children. And I would like to just
tell you a little of my own story.

I was born in 1932 at de
Rose Hill in the very north of South Australia. My people, the Yankunytjatjara
people, call this place Kantja. My Aboriginal mother Lily was a house girl (in
other words a servant) on a large cattle station, and my Irish father was the
station manager. Along with three of my sisters and my brother, I was forcibly
removed from my grief stricken mother, at the age of only two years. I was not
reunited with her for thirty three years - by which time we did not even have a
common language with which to speak to each other. I never again met my father.

The grief I have felt,
and still feel about this, is profound. And the pain my mother must have felt,
having five children removed, is unimaginable. Yet the truth and meanings of
such experiences were silenced. And not only back then. Incredibly, they are
still being denied by many even today!

I was reared at a Church
Mission Home called Colebrook, initially in Quorn in rural South Australia and
then later in Adelaide. We tji tji tjuta -Colebrook kids -were expected to be
grateful for being saved. In a book about Colebrook written in 1937 called
Pearls from the Deep, we were
seen as:

"waste material"... "rescued from the
degradation of camp life"... "brought up from the depths of ignorance,
superstition and vice"... "to be fashioned as gems to adorn God's crown".[2]

Many of those
implementing this policy were well intentioned. Yet it is now widely admitted
that, even by the standards of
the time, these interventions were contrary to common law and in breach of
international human rights obligations.

Some of you may have
been at the screening of Rabbit Proof Fence yesterday. This is an excellent recent
Australian film about three young Aboriginal children forcibly removed from
their families in Western Australia, and taken to an Aboriginal settlement 1500
miles away, to be trained as domestic servants. It's a remarkable film. I
believe it will go a long way towards developing people's understandings of the
policies that produced the stolen generations, and the human suffering that
resulted. I highly recommend it to you.

Modern Australia
therefore has been built on a foundation of injustice, violence and
dispossession - everything in fact that Gandhi devoted his life to opposing.
The legacy of the British invasion of Australia has been devastating for my
people. And the atrocities that I have described cannot be dismissed
conveniently as something that happened way back in Australia's past, because my
people live with the consequences of invasion and white fellas' rules every day
of our lives.

Let me just give you a brief snapshot of Indigenous
Australia today. Indigenous Australians have third world health status. Our
children are dying as babies at the same rate as in the poorest countries in the
world. Our people are twice as likely to be hospitalised as other Australians.
Indigenous life expectancy in Australia is 20 years lower than for the
non-Indigenous population. This means that we do not have an "older population"
in the usual sense of the term.

Our educational participation and achievement is
dramatically lower than that of the rest of the population. We still have a
situation where Indigenous unemployment rates are over 50%, and where most
Aboriginal people live below the poverty line. Substance abuse and violence are
at epidemic proportions in our communities. Indigenous people, who number only
2% of the population, account for 15% of homicide offenders and 15% of homicide
victims. 20% of adult male prisoners and 80% of female prisoners are
Aboriginal. For many of these women their only crime is that they are poor.
They are mostly in gaol for non-payment of fines or traffic offences or because
they cannot afford bail.

Aboriginal women are more than 45 times more likely than
non-Aboriginal women to be victims of domestic violence. 60% of Australian
youth in care or custody or other forms of detention are Aboriginal. We have a
generation of Aboriginal youth who have come to see gaol as inevitability -
their rite of passage to adulthood. Not only is the collective wisdom of our
elders disappearing, but also the collective possibility and vitality of youth
is being denied.

There are enormous implications here, for individuals, for
communities, and for the future of our culture. I do not want to shock you with
these statistics, or to give the impression that no progress is being made. But
neither do I want to shy away from the enormity of the problem. And I do want
to argue that not enough is being done at the level of government. Despite some
far-reaching national Inquiries and Reports, for example into Racist Violence,
Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the Forcible Removal of Children, few of their
recommendations have been implemented.

But despite this, much good work is being done and we have
made many small gains, and a few giant leaps forward. There are some grounds
for hope. For example, our population is increasing at a faster rate than the
rest of the population, and a growing number of people are identifying as
Indigenous. School participation and attendance rates are improving steadily,
in fact quite dramatically in early childhood and primary years. Our Year 12
retention rates have shifted from single digits to about 32%. In 1964 the late
Charles Perkins was our first Aboriginal graduate. By 1998 there were over 8000
Indigenous students enrolled in university courses.

We have growing representation in the parliament and in
senior positions in the public service, academia, the law and medicine. We have
a vibrant Aboriginal arts community with many examples of excellence in dance,
music, film, television, painting and both traditional and modern arts and
crafts. And there have been some notable sporting success stories. I'm sure I
do not need to remind you of the sensational performance of Cathy Freeman in the
last Olympics. This was especially wonderful for me because I was there. Not
in the race, you understand! But in the stadium!

But there are many less spectacular and less publicised
achievements too. I'd like to tell you this evening a few of these lesser-known
stories. For there are many examples of quite heroic "civil disobedience" -
what Gandhi would have called "passive resistance". My first story is from
1965. And it is a good example of how important the global community of
peace-loving people is.

It is known in Australia as the Freedom Ride. Its
major impetus was the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the
non-violent protest tactics of Martin Luther King. After some Sydney students
had demonstrated against American racial discrimination, they were confronted
with the challenge of doing something about the discrimination on their own
doorstep. So they organised a bus tour visiting some racially segregated towns
in northern New South Wales and Queensland. During the tour, Aboriginal student
Charles Perkins emerged as the leader of the group and became its media
spokesperson.

Compared to Gandhi's campaigns, the Freedom Ride was a
modest movement, involving about 30 students and lasting less than three weeks.
But there are also similarities, particularly in the way that public opinion was
mobilised. Through the media, other Australians became aware of the racism in
outback towns -much of which was tolerated by local and state government
authorities. The Freedom Ride in turn empowered Aboriginal people in these
country towns to speak out. For example, Aboriginal women in one country town
became brave enough to publicly name the hypocritical men, the so-called pillars
of society, who were involved sexually with Aboriginal women. And the men
scurried for cover. It was great! This happened in a town where Aboriginal
children weren't allowed to use the local swimming pool, and Aboriginal people
were denied service in clubs and some shops. The Freedom Ride became a major
turning point in black and white relations in Australia.

My next story dates back to 1966. It is about an
Aboriginal man, Vincent Lingiari, from the Gurindji tribe, who led a walk-off of
stockmen, their families and others from a huge British-owned cattle station in
the Northern territory. Lingiari and others enlisted the support of the unions,
churches and students. Their fight for better wages and conditions became a
struggle against discriminatory social conditions and for rights to their land.
Despite being close to starvation, and in the face of enormous pressure from
pastoralists and the Government, the Gurindji held firm for almost eight years,
when the strike ended and the Gurindji lands were restored to their rightful
owners. In many ways it was our equivalent of the Salt March!

My final example is the Tent Embassy. On Australia Day,
January 26th 1972, the conservative Prime Minister, McMahon, announced his
government's Aboriginal policy. McMahon's policy denied Aboriginal people any
right to land or compensation. Mining was to be allowed on Aboriginal reserves
and Aboriginal communities were to be granted only special purpose leases. This
was the last straw for young Aboriginal activists. And so that afternoon, a
beach umbrella appeared on the lawns in front of the old Parliament House,
Canberra, with a sign saying "Aboriginal Embassy". Later a tent was erected
there and then a more permanent structure. It has become known as the
Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Over the next months thousands joined the
demonstration, which received national and international publicity.

Despite repeated efforts to have it removed over the years,
it is still there today and houses a display and Aboriginal art works. In fact
in 1995 it was listed by the Australian Heritage Commission for its political
and cultural significance! A few months back the Government removed the
Embassy's toilet and cut electricity to the site, but Greenpeace moved in and
installed solar power panels, and the United Trades and Labour Council delivered
a "ports-loo" [a portable washroom]. It's a wonderful example of collective
non-violent action!

It might be appropriate at this point to try to convey to
you something about the complex political landscape in Australia. It's useful
to understand some of that complexity because it underpins the possibilities for
reconciliation in the future. A backdrop reality is that governments in
Australia (and I am talking here of any political persuasion) adopt their
agendas on the basis of what will win votes and keep their party in office.
And, to put it bluntly, there are no votes in Aboriginal affairs.

'Popular opinion' in Australia about social issues is a
strange and sometimes contradictory thing. Let me give you a couple of examples
of this. In 1996 for instance, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation
undertook surveys that revealed that 83% of the people supported
reconciliation. And, 92% supported the proposition that all Australians should
have equal opportunity. However, in practice people often see this as 'treating
everyone the same'. This of course overlooks the crucial reality that not
everyone starts at the same point! An extreme version of this faulty thinking
emerged in recent years with a far right wing political party that gained
worrying levels of support. Its version of 'treating everyone the same' was to
advocate the abolition of government support for disadvantaged groups, such as
Aboriginal people.

Another example is that many Australians genuinely feel a
sense of pride about traditional Aboriginal culture. They are interested in our
paintings, dancing, stories of the Dreaming, music and perhaps bush tucker - our
traditional foods. But this interest in traditional Aboriginal culture does not
necessarily embrace a concern about the often-grim realities of life that
contemporary Aboriginal people face. Rather, it is the celebration of an
ancient and exotic past. People sometimes appropriate Aboriginal culture in
order to showcase diversity. In other contexts these same people behave in ways
that disempower Aboriginal people.

Our Prime Minister boasts about "practical
reconciliation". By this he means providing funding for Indigenous health,
housing, education and welfare. But these should be our basic human rights.
They should be core government business, not special initiatives. What is also
needed is a philosophical commitment from the Government. To coin a new phrase,
we'd like him to put his mouth where his money is!

The Australian Federal government has still not given an
official apology to the Aboriginal people. State governments have. Churches
have. Even the Pope has! But not our own Prime Minister. And 200 years after
the British invasion we still do not have a Treaty. I would argue that a Treaty
is necessary to deal with the unfinished business between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous Australians. A treaty is also necessary to build new
relationships for the future. If Australia is to move in to the twenty
first-century and hold its head high among nations such as Canada, who have
negotiated treaties with their first peoples, we too must have a treaty, which
spells out mutual rights and obligations. Without it there can be no meaningful
reconciliation in Australia.

There is still no mention of Australia's first peoples in
our Constitution. The land rights of Indigenous peoples are still not
adequately ensured. We do not even have a ministerial portfolio devoted
exclusively to Indigenous Affairs. It is lumped in with Immigration and
Multicultural affairs, which in their own right are, of course, deserving of
great attention.

So there are many obstacles to reconciliation at an
official level. But I am pleased to say that there is a vigorous and energetic
people's movement for reconciliation. And from this energy I take great heart.
I think in a relatively short historical time frame, we have experienced a major
shift in thinking and practice in mainstream Australia.

In 1998, on the first anniversary of the tabling in
parliament of the Report on the Stolen children, we had a national Sorry Day,
and over half a million people signed Sorry Books and took part in ceremonies
across the country. A year later again, the people's movement launched the
Journey of Healing. And in 2000 it was affirmed again, when around 250,000
people walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of reconciliation.
This was the biggest turnout for a single cause ever seen in Australia. And
50,000 walked in my home city, Adelaide and 70,000 in Brisbane. In fact there
were reconciliation walks and events in cities and towns right across the
country - some in small country towns with just a few hundred people, but these
were just as significant as the bigger capital city events.

These amazing outpourings of the Australian people were an
inspiration. The people's voice was speaking loud and clear to the leaders of
this nation. They were saying:

 We want a country where Aboriginal people
and Torres Strait Islander people and Australians from the wider community can
live together in harmony and mutual respect.

 We want to heal the wounds of the past.

 We want to make this symbolic gesture for a
reconciled Australia.

 The time has come - we want this now.

The people were seeing a real possibility - the possibility
of reconciliation.

Quite apart from some of the well-publicised events, there
are thousands of other reconciliation activities, happening right across the
board. Quite remarkable things are happening in church groups, community
reconciliation groups, in schools and universities, business corporations,
professional associations, and at the level of state and local government.
These are inspiring examples of a people's movement for reconciliation in
Australia. It is this sort of commitment that sustains me in my belief that we
can make a difference if we are persistent enough. But there is a long way to
go - it is an unfinished journey and we cannot afford to be complacent.

It is to Australia's shame that the plight of our people is
still drastic enough to have warranted United Nations Human Rights scrutiny and
criticism. Several United Nations committees have focussed their attention on
Australia's performance in the area of human rights. For example:

 The Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination

 The Human Rights Committee.

 The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights.

The sorts of concerns they have raised include:

 the slow progress in resolving land rights,

 mandatory sentencing,

 over representation of Indigenous people in
custody,

 the inadequate response of the Australian
Government to the report about the stolen generations,

 And, our treatment of asylum seekers - which I
will say more about later.

It is clear to me that all of these issues could be
resolved if the political will to do so is there. For example, recently the new
leader of the Northern Territory Government overturned their mandatory
sentencing legislation, as her first political act in office. (As you would
know, mandatory sentencing means that sentences for offences are prescribed and
automatically applied. Magistrates have no discretion in deciding what might be
appropriate in particular circumstances). This affects Aboriginal people
disproportionately and there have been some notable and tragic cases - such as
an Aboriginal youth, imprisoned for stealing some pencils and texta pens, who
later hanged himself in his cell.

So governments can have an enormous impact. As I
understand it, your Gathering Strength initiative has set out an
extremely positive strategy for transforming relationships between Canada's
indigenous and non-indigenous people. I am sure that I will learn more about it
during my visit. I was profoundly moved by its opening statement of
Reconciliation - which fully acknowledges the mistakes of the past. And I was
inspired by the significance of the programs that have been put in place to
build strength and the possibility of a shared future. I believe this speaks of
a country that is taking its history on board in a mature and honest way, and
one, which is demonstrating its genuine commitment to the possibility of a
better and different future.

And, I think that working towards a better future involves
opposing social injustice in its many forms. One of the ways in which this
happens is to join with others to make connections and to form alliances. There
have been some examples of this recently in Australia, and I am sure you have
the same experiences here. Situations where anti-racism groups work with peace
groups who in turn join with reconciliation activists, and so on. These sorts
of connections are very important in Australia where the population is
relatively small.

A particular example of this sort of collective struggle
applies in current activities in Australia to oppose our Government's treatment
of asylum seekers. Hopefully we are influencing public opinion, but it is not
easy when the Government has actively created anxiety about "border control".
In fact it won the last election using the slogan: We will decide who comes
into our country...

The issue has been a potent one ever since the Norwegian
vessel, the Tampa, arrived in Australian waters in August 2001, having rescued
438 refugees from drowning. The Government refused to allow them to land,
despite the 1951 International convention on refugees, which makes it clear that
any refugees rescued on the high seas are to be taken to the nearest port. I
would never have believed such behaviour to be possible in my country... to
think of it fills me with anger and shame. And yet it has been widely
recognised by political commentators that it was this "tough stand" that won the
election.

Obviously this topic deserves to be a lecture in itself -
which is not possible today. However, I do want to make the point that people's
human capacity is severely diminished when they cease to regard other people as
fully human. And it is interesting to note the ways that they are encouraged
along this path, for example, with the use of language such as illegals, queue
jumpers, potential terrorists, and so on. All of it stripping people of their
fundamental humanity - objectifying them and rendering them disposable. To me
it is both morally and ethically offensive.

I believe that the Government has manufactured a crisis in
relation to asylum seekers. The facts are that there are relatively few asylum
seekers arriving in Australia compared to other countries. Let me give you
some telling figures. Over a ten-year
period, other comparable countries have taken in refugees in the following
numbers:

 Canada -
100,000

 Denmark -
50,000

 Sweden -
more than 150,000

 United
Kingdom -100,000

 Australia
-less than 10,000.

In 2000, for example,
there were some 800 potential placements within Australia's humanitarian
category that had not been filled. And of course, the real human rights issue
here is that many asylum seekers have suffered appallingly in their home
countries. I believe that Australia could afford to be more generous.

Finally, I would like to
return to the "unfinished journey" mentioned in my title. Maybe it is a
never-ending journey, by definition. It certainly seems like an odyssey at
times! Of course reconciliation will be slow and there will be frustrating
tangents and dead ends. Sometimes I have to remind myself that the climate for
change operates in cycles - with some contexts and times being more opportune
than others. Gandhi reminded us of the need for patience, when he wrote:

"To be dissatisfied with
the slowness of progress betrays ignorance of the way in which reform works"

What is clear, also, is
that reconciliation cannot happen at all without the efforts of people of good
will. I believe everyone has a decision to make about where they stand and what
they stand for. And those who attempt to construct a life that embodies
integrity, truth and justice must support each other- no matter which part of
the world they inhabit.

Indigenous people here
and in my country have embarked on journeys of healing. Against all odds we
have survived, and we are strong and we are proud. Our resolve is heightened by
a global community of people committed to actively opposing oppression and
violence in all its forms. You are part of that global community.

Let us focus on what has
brought us all here tonight. Let us rejoice in what we have in common. Let us
celebrate our victories, and at the same time maintain our courage for the
difficult challenges that lie ahead. I invite every one of you to join us in
our struggle for justice and reconciliation, to embark with us on our journey of
healing.